Students at an Oxford college have criticised safety procedures at their accommodation block after a fire left three people in hospital.

About 40 firefighters were called to the Sacher Building, a residential block of New College in Longwall Street at 5am today. The fire ripped through the top floor, causing about £50,000 damage.

Student Orli Bachall, 21, was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital suffering from smoke inhalation. Two other students were treated for shock. It is believed the fire was started by an electrical fault. Students said there were panicked attempts to call the emergency services, and claimed fire alarms on the top floor were not working.

Middle common room president Jason File, 23, said: "Procedures needed to work a lot better than they did. We had a fire drill yesterday but there was no register of names so we did not know who was out."

Glyn Baker, 21, added: "The first I knew was when somebody came banging on my door. If I had not heard that I would not have been going anywhere." Student Freddie Arps, 26, said: "Until the firemen and domestic bursar came banging on my door at 6.15am, I knew nothing about it. The fire alarms on the top floor were not working and phones in the room have not been installed. There was just one pay phone downstairs in the bar so we had to call the porters' lodge and they phoned the fire brigade." The bursar of New College, David Palfreyman, said there were fire detectors in each bedroom and telephones were being installed.

He said: "This was a very traumatic experience but all the students behaved in a very competent manner."

The incident led to traffic delays in the area for several hours.

Story date: Thursday 28 October

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.